


Never Let Happiness Appear in Sorrow's Guise

by More_night



Series: Medea [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: First Kiss, Frottage, Hand Jobs, M/M, in that order
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-02
Updated: 2016-04-02
Packaged: 2018-05-30 16:45:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6432391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/More_night/pseuds/More_night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brief moments from Will and Hannibal's new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Let Happiness Appear in Sorrow's Guise

**Author's Note:**

> I was watching Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky, with Mads Mikkelsen in it. And there was the piano sex scene. And I saw this. And I COULD NOT UNSEE IT. 
> 
> Takes place before and after Will found, Medea, the dog. But it can be read independently.

They had a two hours layover in Charles-de-Gaulle, between Toronto and Frankfurt. It was where they almost got caught.

While Will showed his fake passport to the customs officer, Hannibal picked up his cleared bag, his face stiffening in what Will knew was pain. To everyone else, it could seem like discomfort, impatience. A bad day.

The officer eyed the photograph, and Will, and the photograph, and Will again. He placed the passport down stiffly. “What happened to your cheek?” he asked.

Will swallowed and felt Hannibal’s gaze on him. “A blue spotted ray. Stabbed me right in the face, in Florida.”

“Rays can do that?”

“They will if they think you’re about to kill and eat them,” Will said, his broad smile pulling on the stitches. “Not that I’d intended to eat it.”

“Why were you in Florida?”

“Scuba-diving. There’s some great spots in the Keys.”

The man closed Will’s passport and kept it on his side of the glass. “Mind coming with me to check your luggage, Sir?”

Will shook his head. “Not at all.” Ten feet away, Hannibal had watched the exchange. Will licked his lips. “You can wait for me past the gates. I’m sure it won’t be long,” he told him.

Hannibal took his left hand to his jacket, near the hidden pocket where he kept a short ceramic knife. Then, with Will’s eyes on him, he brought it back to his side. And he nodded and walked away.

He found a seat under the arched ceiling and placed his bag down. Through the windows that dotted the rounded ceiling of the terminal, planes drew shadowy forms on the ground. For a time, he wondered how long he would wait.

Then, he contemplated how long it would seem right to wait, before it became obvious that Will would not return. It was an ideal opportunity for him to leave, whether to turn himself in or to walk away.

Maybe, in this setting, Hannibal would return to prison. His fingers tightened over his side, where he knew his wound was bleeding quietly again into the bandages.

It could be for the best. Except this time, he would not be waiting. There was some newfound, nameless freedom at the thought. He would not have to play the nice prisoner part anymore.

Around him, people came and went. Hannibal thought how would this understanding take place exactly. Would the molecules and hormones rearrange in his brain, and the image of Will Graham slowly be erased? Would he, in such case, return to be the exact person he was before? The brain’s plasticity was sometimes stunning. Perhaps sameness would settle. After years, the precise smell of Will would be lost. But he did not remember how things were, before that, or how he could go back to them.

Something dark, approaching, caught his eye. And Will sat down beside him. For a moment, neither of them spoke. They looked at the planes taking off, a ballet of white and noise.

“That was close,” Will said.

“Should we reconsider the flight to Frankfurt for the time being?”

Will shrugged, angling his body to restrict movement in his shoulder. “No. Car could be worse.”

He noticed Hannibal’s fingers, under his jacket, over his shirt, curled over the gauze bandage.

Hannibal pulled his hand out enough to show his fingertips, red from where blood had soaked into his black shirt. Will nodded, swallowed, then frowned.

Tilting his head back against the seat, Hannibal closed his eyes. He could try, but he could not imagine a world in which he did not wait for Will, in which Will was not coming for him. It should have worried him. Instead, he floated in a space that was filled with the warmth of the afternoon sun, flowing through the windows, the tearing pain in his right side and the touch of Will’s fingers on his forearm.

 

* * *

 

It was a very bright December morning. It had snowed last night, but the sun was melting the white away already. Will placed the bowl down in front of Medea. Then he gathered his tea cup from the counter and sat down on the ground beside her, back against the wall.

A few minutes later, Hannibal walked in, hair slightly ruffled from sleep. He quirked an eyebrow at him.

“She still won’t eat if there’s no one with her,” Will explained.

“Has she lost the habit of following you to every room?”

Will shook his head. “She probably won’t stop doing it. If she were younger, maybe.”

Walking up to the counter, Hannibal poured a splash of milk in his empty tea cup. “I will go in town, after breakfast. Any requests?”

In the light, the tiny strands of gray in Dea’s black hair glimmered. Will placed a hand on her back, felt the muscles move as she ate, let the weight of his hand comfort her. “Are you going to kill someone?” he asked.

Unfazed, Hannibal reached for the sugar. “No,” he said. He paused as he unwrapped a cube of brown sugar from its delicate white wrapping. “Unless it’s a request.”

“I meant, eventually,” Will said, getting to his feet.

Steam rose above Hannibal’s cup as he poured the black tea. The dark brown was clouded, then less clouded with the milk, until it turned to a smooth caramel color, with twirls and lace inside. “To commit myself to the opposite would be adventurous,” he evoked. “But I have no particular desires of that sort at the moment.”

Behind Will, Dea had stopped eating and was sitting still again in front of her bowl. “Dea, baby, it’s fine. Finish your breakfast,” Will told her gently. The dog cocked her head, hesitated for a moment and started eating again. “You don’t miss it?” Will said, turning back to Hannibal.

“Do you?”

Will stared away. “It wasn’t a… habit in me.”

His tea was still too hot to drink and Hannibal curled his hands around the white, sturdy porcelain cup. “I miss music,” he said. “The music store in Espelkamp has assured me they can deliver the piano today if I pay in full.”

Will nodded. He had thought often – he was not sure he had thought of anything else, really – of the next time he would have to kill someone. Because it would be like this, wouldn't it? He would not have a choice and it would feel right, and he would do it calmly, like chopping wood, until the life left the tree and the solid celluloid became blood.

Hannibal reached over the counter and closed his hand over Will’s arm, near the cuff of his shirt. “There is a possibility that we will not have to kill anyone else. Have you considered it?” Hannibal asked him.

His fingers were warm from the heat of the tea coming through the cup. Secured but not restricting, sitting on Will’s skin as if they wanted to permeate it with… “That’s not what we’re really talking about, is it?” Will said.

Taking his eyes down, Hannibal opened his mouth, seeming to ponder something, then closed it. When he stared at Will again, it was honest and Will felt it like a devastating wave.

 

* * *

 

Waking up early, Will left to walk the woods. He expected to be weary when he returned, maybe enough to sleep, but he was not. His legs were stiff, his back was tense and he was agitated, inside, a kind of restlessness, not unlike a rising violence. His mind kept coming back to what he had seen on Hannibal’s face, a few mornings ago. An unworried warning and a plain offering altogether.

He shut the front door quietly. Dea came to wound herself around his feet and he patted her flanks gently. Hannibal had fed her already. And he was awake. Notes from the piano in the living room filled the house with rhythmical counterpoint, as fluid and effortless as Hannibal made it seem.

On his way to the living room, Will slipped his jacket off and folded it on a nearby chair, then stepped out of his shoes. Something burning inside him, tiny and resistant, the way butterflies were. Not far from power either, what wooshed in his veins and throbbed in his ears. He was pretty sure Hannibal had never really envisioned things this way. Not primarily. The same way murder was murder and not really murder, was love love and everything else too. Maybe in the blur of feelings as they swooped him when he woke up and thought he was still dreaming, behind closed eyelids.

He stepped into the living room. Hannibal glanced up at him and his fingers did not still, a lighter _larghetto_ surrounding them.

Before he could change his mind, Will walked to his side.

It was only when Will’s fingers closed around his right wrist that Hannibal stopped playing.

Will pushed his arm away from the black and white keys. Hannibal was curious at first. Will saw the muscles twitch near his jaw, as Hannibal thought maybe he would kill him, this time, finally.

Will moved closer and Hannibal’s face went to a flicker of astonishment when Will guided his hand to his hip. Then it changed into something else entirely, blank and open at the same time, when Will slipped between the seat and the piano and straddled one of Hannibal’s legs.

Sighing almost imperceptibly, looking as if he had just taken a dizzying drop, Hannibal felt Will’s erection adjust in his pants against his right hip. Will’s eyes did not leave him, steady and steel. While Hannibal’s hand gripped his sweater, Will reached for the other man’s dress shirt and pulled it out of his pants, bunching it up, watching Hannibal looking down at their joined midsections then back up.

Breathing growing raspier, Hannibal brought his left hand to the other side of Will’s waist and used the leverage to bring them tighter together, gaze unflinching. Will’s hands went to the buttons and fly of Hannibal’s pants. He undid them and slipped his hand inside. Hannibal closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them again, he wound fingers into Will’s hair and around the back of his neck to craddle his face closer. To have his breath against his temple and mouth at the collar of his sweater while Will stroked him. He was hard already and pressed them closer still.

Forehead into the crook of Hannibal’s neck, Will shifted to sit astride him properly. He looked down at them and only saw his wrist, where it disappeared under the pale yellow of Hannibal’s shirt. He felt the head of the other man’s cock with the pad of his thumb everytime his fist came up, Hannibal moving with him in minute jerks.

Eyes flying from Will’s face to his hands, flickering as if he was painting this moment in his mind with their touch, Hannibal undid the belt, buttons and fly of Will’s pants and reached for him, snaking his other hand under his shirt in his back. Lips parted, Will pushed back enough to slip his cock out of his boxers.

He moaned softly against Hannibal’s shoulder as their warm flesh touched, brushing, then grinding in between them underneath the rumple of clothing. The other man’s hands went down to his hips and guided them into a more continuous sway.

Will listened to the sound of their clothing ruffling, of their skin together. All he could see were Hannibal's unfocused eyes. No longer bearing the cadenced movement, Will reached in between them and grasped both their cocks, tightening so they could both thrust upward, hurried and graceless.

Hannibal’s lips closed near his jaw. “I…” He stopped to stretch his hand over Will’s cheek and neck, like he could absorb his mind and drink it from his face. “I’m close, Will.”

Will jerked his hips, his hand trembling around them. “We should probably have undressed,” he said.

“No,” Hannibal breathed. “This is fine.”

Hannibal drew back slightly, pursing his lips, and freed his hands to rip Will’s sweater open from the collar to the waist.

His mouth against Will’s collarbone, Hannibal slid his hands behind him and closed the fallboard over the keys. “Hang on to me,” he said.

Will did so and Hannibal lifted him against the piano. Sensing the warmth of Will’s skin through the thin material of his still buttoned dress shirt, Hannibal moved in desperate thrusts against Will’s belly. Will’s lips were glued to his neck and one of his legs wrapped around him.

When Hannibal came, Will tilted his head back to see him close his eyes and still completely as the warm liquid dotted his skin and stretched into a damp patch between them.

Panting, Hannibal wove a hand down and stroked Will firmly, in time with the rapid twitchs of the other man’s hips.

Will came seconds later with a deep exhale, as if his chest had been compressed forever and the weight had just come off.

Sitting back on the piano bench, Hannibal unwound his arms from around Will and brought him to sit beside him. For a moment, they both breathed until the air around them became nearly quiet again.

Hannibal stared at his hand, striped in drying sperm, flat on his thigh, then at one fading handprint on the black, lacquered fallboard. “How long did you consider this?” he said.

Will shook his head. “Not long.” He stared down at his torn clothing. “It just became obvious. Poignant.”

Hannibal straightened his back and brushed a strand of hair back behind his ear, feeling the pull of the scar tissue in his side. “My apologies,” he said. “For your shirt.”

Head held down, Will took Hannibal’s hand and meshed their fingers. “I don’t mind it,” he said softly.

 

* * *

 

After dinner, they took coffee out on the porch. In the front yard, Medea searched the ground for the voles’ tunnels burried under the dead grass. “Can I sleep with you?” Will said. Then he licked his lips. “In your bed,” he clarified.

Hannibal wore a small, satisfied smile as he stared in the distance. “Naturally,” he agreed. “But it’s better we use yours. Medea is accustomed to sleeping in your room.”

Will went to bed first. He fell asleep to Hannibal playing Stravinsky’s _Les cinq doigts_ downstairs and memories of the field where they had found Cassie Boyle’s impaled body, her skin white like lightning in death. Not sure he dreamed, because where he went, it felt so deep, he woke up later, with a start. The images he remembered from his nightmare were just black and clouds and someone calling him from afar.

There was warmth and weight on the other side of the bed. Will stretched his arm out and it found Hannibal’s chest, then his shoulders and his neck. He touched them carefully, fingers spread out like he was blind. As his eyes got used to the darkness, Will made out the other man’s face, a bit paler than the rest, but especially the white of his open eyes.

“You’re not sleeping,” he noted.

“Not tonight.”

“You can sleep,” Will said.

A light noise came from the pillowcase as Hannibal shook his head. “I prefer this. Listening to your breathing.” He placed his fingertips in the middle of Will’s chest. “Feeling your heart beating. Like it’s speaking with me in the dark.”

Propping himself up on one elbow, Will slid toward Hannibal. He kissed him until he parted his lips and kissed him back, hand flat, inert on his chest, waiting, again.

“Tomorrow night, you can sleep,” Will said against Hannibal’s cheek.

The other man touched his lips to Will’s brow, the bridge of his nose, his temple. “Or the night after that.”

In the corner of the room, Medea shifted on her pad. She was never really sleeping. But in the night, her watch tended to slip down slightly. At the beginning, Will had thought she would have liked a cage better. Always cornered, but always protected, without the unknown open space all around her. Will could make out a sliver of moonlight between the blinds now. He nosed at Hannibal’s jaw until he could place his ear alongside his throat, where all the life was, under the layer of skin. “I can hear your blood,” he said.

“That’s the carotid artery. A bit lower,” Hannibal said, tilting his neck back in the pillow, inviting Will to dip his head near his left clavicle. “Is the jugular vein. The one that takes the empty vessel of spent blood back into the lungs, to be infused with oxygen, brought to live again.”

Will closed his eyes, listening to the fainter noise of blood. A murmur under the skin, almost exactly like the one he would ear if he was alone in perfect silence. “I like this one.” Will shifted closer so that he could rest his head on the pillow and keep his cheek on Hannibal’s shoulder, his ear attached to the secret vein underneath. “It’s like a gust of wind, light, unfathomable.”

Hannibal smiled faintly and rested his chin on the top of Will’s head. “Then sleep.”

And Will slept, immersed into murmurs of blood circulation and beats of the heart.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry, this is my first official porn in years. (I'd forgotten how much pronouns are suddenly a horrible pain...). I hope it wasn't too weird. Title is from Euripides' Medea, transl. from E. P. Coleridge. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFWwW406Twk) is Les cinq doigts, the piece Hannibal is playing (and also the piece Igor Stravinsky is playing in the film).
> 
> On [tumblr](https://davantagedenuit.tumblr.com/).


End file.
